Insurance Games | Arthritis Information

 

I wanted to let you all know I got my Celebrex. My doctor pushed, and I let them know I wasn't going to back down on this one.

I said to the RA nurse, "I've had to boost my prednisone way up again, and I'd like to try to bring it down a litter slower. Can I get a 1 mg. prednisone pill script so I can try to go down by smaller doses?" Guess what? Insurance won't cover it! You can't have 1 mg. 5 is the smallest you can have, so unless you're brilliant with a pill splitter (and hey, if I were that coordinated, I wouldn't be here), you have to go down by no less than 2.5 mg. at a time, and it's too much.

I said, how about if you write the script anyway, and I just pay for the pills. I think predinsone is one of the cheaper prescriptions, and at this point, who cares? Why would they want me on prednisone, with all the complications it causes?

I think it's mostly a game. They want to see how hard you'll push to get what you need. If you quit, it doesn't cost them anything. If you fight back, they sometimes cave. But they make you wait (it's been a week).

Anyway, I got the Celebrex. Now, I hope it really works.Thanks for encouraging me to push, because I tend not to do that.

Happy to know you got the Celebrex. Ridiculous about the prednisone. I don't see how you could split those either and I am not allowed to go down by more then 1 mg per mo or it could cause a flare. Although, I think I live in one.

Keep fighting. It really is ridiculous because it isn't that expensive of a medication. But the 1 mg are about 3x as expensive as the 5 mg. I can't figure that one out.

Again, your doctor should take care of this. It is his job.

Yeah, I paid 6.88 for 5 milligrams, and the 1 milligrams were about 30 dollars.  So stupid.

I am going to use my pill splitter and split, split, split for my life.  lol  Just do your best to chop them down and use the pill cutter.  They make good ones that work well.  You can hold it in with a toothpick or a knife to keep it in place.  The one I use has a rubber thing that braces the pill.

Good luck on coming down.  I dropped 2.5 milligrams in one day -- I really wish my doctor would have warned me.  My mom weaned at .5 every two weeks.
That explains it. I figured there was some reason. Deanna, seems like you know everything there is to know about RA.

I have the same pill splitter you do, Arizonara - the one with the rubber brace. When I first started using it, I tried to line up the line with the splitter. That didn't work. The harder I tried, the smaller pieces I ended up with. Prednisone is so bitter, if I can't get it down in one piece right away, I'm gagging on it all day.

See - I was doing the same thing - 2.5 mg. I had no idea how bad an idea that was. I thought I was doing so well. Well, live & learn.

I hope your new insurance plan will help you out with everything, AZ.
I went down by 2.5 mg each week with no problems. If you end up making a mess of a pill when you try to splint it, you can crush the whole thing and then divide it up. Just put it in a spoon full of jelly or choc. syrup to cut the bitter and chase it with some juice, etc.That's a great idea, Crunchy - I hadn't thought of crunching (ha!) the pill. I probably couldn't divide it smaller than 4ths, but that would be pretty close. That's one way to work around it. 
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